It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Tuesday, March 11th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by the Cowboy State Daily Morning Show With Jake! From 6 to 10 a.m., Monday through Friday, host Jake Nichols brings you news, weather, sports AND in-depth interviews with news-makers from across Wyoming - presented with Jake’s unique humor and lively commentary. Just click on the Cowboy State Daily homepage and join the live broadcast!
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The jail in Sweetwater County took custody of 12 people Thursday for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The sudden influx, which consisted entirely of males between the ages of 21 and 41, is well above the jail’s daily average of ICE detainee bookings. But it’s not unheard-of - that’s what a Sweetwater County Sheriff’s spokesman told Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland.
“Last month, they averaged less than one per day. Last February, 2024 they averaged zero, and saw zero on a daily basis, and so this was an influx. The spokesperson for the sheriff, Jason Mower, said, Well, you know, we do see influxes, though. That's not unheard of to have just a spike out of nowhere. And he didn't answer which agencies arrested them, but he did confirm that ICE didn't have an operation in the county last week. So you know, what's a probable scenario is, local or state law enforcement are coming into contact with people and seeing what has been characterized as an inflated, a much larger than usual ICE wanted list in the national database and then taking people in on warrants.”
The Sweetwater County Detention Center is the only Wyoming jail with a federal contract in place by which it doubles as a long-term holding facility for ICE detainees.
Read the full story HERE.
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A hearing for another double-digit rate increase for Rocky Mountain Power is coming before the Wyoming Public Service Commission on Tuesday, and it’s ringing some alarm bells with Wyoming residents.
If a double-digit rate increase is approved, total rates since 2024 will have spiked more than 30%, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean.
“Their original ask is 14.7%, that would add about $17 a month to an average residential bill that uses, say, 700 kilowatt hours. There is a settlement stipulation between Rocky Mountain Power Wyoming, Office of Consumer advocates and Wyoming industrial energy customers, that would lower that percent to 10.2% with a return on equity of up to 9.65%. that's still double digits, though, and if you look at the rate increases that have been approved over the past year, they got that 8.3% bump in January of 2024, they had another one in July that I think was 11.9%... with these continued requests for rate increases… there just doesn't seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel.”
Cost-of-living adjustments to social security incomes have not kept pace with inflation, so utility rate increases hit senior citizens and those on fixed incomes particularly hard. It doesn’t seem that the pressure will let up any time soon, with power-hungry AI computing centers on the horizon, and the continued struggle with inflation.
Read the full story HERE.
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A lawsuit related to a near-fatal house fire in a small town near Green River has taken a strange turn, with sanctions against an attorney for citing fake cases generated by AI.
The lawsuit centers on damages incurred by the Wadsworth family, when their house caught fire in February of 2022. Fire investigators pointed to a faulty hoverboard battery, which sparked the blaze. Two members of the household were saved by Ryan Pasborg, who was given the nation's highest honor for heroism for his actions.
Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports, though, that the family’s lawsuit against the manufacturer and the seller of the hoverboard has hit a snag.
“They contend that this fire started when a battery powering a hovercraft, those those little transportation toys you can buy at Walmart … a lithium ion battery charging that hovercraft allegedly burst into flames and started the fire. The family is now suing both Walmart and the maker of the hovercraft, and so it's a big federal case in federal court in Wyoming. A major law firm is representing the family from Sweetwater County… in a filing last month, one of the attorneys making an argument for the family used AI in his legal research, and the AI tool hallucinated eight court cases, which he then cited In the court documents.”
The attorney, who said this was the first time he had ever used AI in this manner, was removed from the case and fined $3,000.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Gillette man accused of shooting someone and eluding law enforcement for four days before Campbell County Sheriff’s deputies caught him appeared in court Monday.
18-year-old Kamren Crousore is facing three felonies and two misdemeanors, including attempted second-degree murder, attempted manslaughter and felony aggravated assault, as well as reckless endangering and unlawful contact for slapping and striking another person in the face. That’s according to crime and court reporter Clair McFarland.
“He returned to court Monday after the four or five day manhunt last week, and was charged with attempted second degree murder... He told the judge he ran because he was scared, and the judge and the judge looked at his, you know, his record, and then the severity of the charges, the strength of the case against him, and went ahead and decided to set a $1 million bond.”
If found guilty, in total Crousore faces up to life in prison plus an additional 72 years, more than $30,000 in fines, or both.
Read the full story HERE.
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And now let’s take a look at today’s weather, with Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day.
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You can get Don’s full forecast on the Cowboy State Daily website. I’ll be back in just 15 seconds with more news.
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Answers about the U.S. Postal Service’s plan for Wyoming mail delivery under its Delivering for America plan have not been easy to come by.
That has Wyoming’s congressional delegation sending outgoing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy a letter seeking concrete answers on how Wyoming mail will be handled, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean.
“It looks like that the US Postal Service is going to ignore the Postal Regulatory Commission's advisory opinion, and in that opinion, they highlighted how rural areas are going to be particularly hurt by this delivering for America plan… 49% and some change of rural you know, zip code pairs are are going to have much slower mail. They're taking away afternoon collections, that's going to add a day to mail deliveries. And there's not really been any clarity around the Cheyenne and Casper local processing units there are going to get to keep more of their mail processing than had originally been proposed… Under delivering for America, if your community is 50 miles or more from a regional processing and distribution center, which in Wyoming is the entire state, you won't get afternoon pickups. So that means the entire state would not be eligible for next day delivery, at least as near as we can tell, under the current proposal. So that's what the Wyoming congressional delegation is really seeking to understand, still, how this proposal affects Wyoming.”
Under the current plans, both Casper and Cheyenne will become what’s called a Local Processing Center or LPC, but local officials still have yet to hear an explanation on what that will entail.
Read the full story HERE.
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Secretary of State Chuck Gray is calling for an elected county official in Wyoming to be removed from office.
On Monday, Gray filed a request that Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock be forced out of her post because of mistakes she made during the 2024 general election, which he believes amounts to “misconduct and malfeasance” and “gross incompetence and even willful neglect.” That’s according to Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson.
“During that election, Hadlock mistakenly used the wrong ballots in some of the voting machines, which led to a vote total discrepancy? Although the races in question were not impacted in any way because they only involved candidates that were running unopposed, it did cause some serious concern among locals and people on a state level… Gray is basing his request that she be removed for office, not off necessarily the mistakes that she made, but off the post election audit that she submitted where she originally attested that everything was fair and square from the election. Gray said, this is extremely problematic for two reasons, because it shows that either had locked, didn't actually perform the audit, or she sat she found the mistakes that were in the audit and covered them up when submitting the results to the Secretary of State's office.”
Gray isn’t the first person to try and remove Hadlock from office over what happened in the 2024 election. Last December, eight qualified electors filed a similar complaint with the governor’s office.
Read the full story HERE.
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A 21-year-old Riverton man who was shot after wrestling with an 85-year-old homeowner last August appeared in court Monday, where a judge decided the state has enough evidence to keep prosecuting him for unlawful entry.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that police were called to a home in Riverton after 11 p.m. Aug. 9, and found Jeremy Merta in the homeowner’s front yard with a gunshot wound to his abdomen, being treated by emergency medical personnel. The homeowner, Wayne Williams, told law enforcement that he was sitting on his couch six feet from his front door when he heard a loud banging, kicking and yelling at the door - so he grabbed a handgun from his bedroom and answered it.
“When it came out in August, like Riverton Police Department is investigating, I think it was a shooting or an incident or something at home, I was like, Well, you know what happened? No one was in custody. I didn't know what went on. So at that time, I went to the … approximate area of the incident, and just started knocking on doors, and I met with Wayne Williams, who said, Yeah, I'm the guy… he tried getting into my home, and I shoved him outside, and we fought on the stairs, and at some point I shot him. And so he was … very honest about everything. And you know, it's not every day you see a 21 year old tangle with an 85 year old, but it's going to end a certain way when the 85 year old has a gun.”
The unlawful entry charge that Merta faces is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and $10,000 in fines. It hinges on the theory that Merta broke into a home in order to commit battery inside it.
Read the full story HERE.
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Trees building a bridge between themselves by fusing branches isn’t unheard of and worth looking out for in Wyoming’s forests.
But tree experts say that when they seem to connect themselves with a straight branch creating an “H” between the trees, that’s much less common, and something to take note of if you ever see it in the wild. It also could mean someone helped connect the trees, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz.
“Trees will grow together. But number one, pine trees are less likely to do so because their bark is so thick. And then secondly, for something to just be like, almost perfectly symmetrical between two trees like that… either people somehow deliberately brought down and tied two branches together, or put a pole between it and the tree grew over them, or something like that… although trees do grow together in various ways, naturally out in the woods. So next time you're out in the woods, keep an eye out, and you might see some cool things. And if you see an H, if you see a perfect H, take a picture of it, because those are rare.”
There are tales and photos circulated on social media of such an H tree formed by two large ponderosa pines in Idaho during the 1970s, but an expert horticulturist said something like that would probably require human manipulation.
Read the full story HERE.
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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
